On a tunnel (help needed)

[avin]

Background:

For week now a group of adventurers is exploring a new found continent.

By this time they figured out that this place had its own civilization, but something happened some imprecise time ago.

Corruption slowly took the land and its people. It stopped raining, water was scarce. Then came hungry, misery, plague, death. People grow insane.

Today this continent is a dead desert. Mutated animals and undead hiding the sun is all that's left. Few of them are sentient. Some people are still alive, but these are all insane.

All written text is illegible. Party has two teories: a magic destroyed all written words or a magic destroyed people's ability to read.

The game:

Next session they will be crossing a large tunnel under several mountains. It links a city on the edge of an intern sea (dry today) to the capital, Vangor. It was build by dwarfs, centuries ago. There's a lateral tunnel leading to dwarven capital, which is blocked.

I'm looking for suggestions, cool features, skill challenges, encounters, side caves, interesting stuff I could put in for this adventure which happens exclusively inside this tunnel.

[weem]

First of all, it sounds fun!

So let's see... brainstorming time...


What if the language is not "illegible", or (as I assume you mean) nonsense... maybe it has simply evolved or changed for some reason. Perhaps there is/was a larger force at work, something that forced its will on the people which drive them insane and to extinction (for the most part).

Imagine if these writings they find are all the same... any parchment found from anywhere has the same symbols - there is a pattern they see emerge - and maybe they discover at some point that in their madness, the minds of the living creatures of this region were consumed with this one message (whatever it is) - doomed to repeat it verbally in their maddened state, and in some cases write it out repeatedly. This force could have come from another plane/world and sought to enslave the population - but their fragile minds could not handle the attempt.

-- Part of the PC's campaign could revolve around the translation of this text.

-- There could be pockets of surviving peoples who succumbed (without losing their minds). They are cult like zealots worshiping this force/entity who can tap into the hive mind of the entity, sharing their thoughts with it, and therefor all of their people.



Skill Challenges

1. Perhaps they meet up with Dwarves alive and thriving in the tunnel - you could have them be very un-trusting of anyone/anything accessing the tunnel. They may have to talk their way into getting permission to pass.


Interesting Encounters

1. Maybe there is a mining cart system in the tunnel - you could have a combat occur while riding in a cart(s).

2. The PC's could encounter a group of zealots who become very aggressive when it becomes clear the PC's will not bow to their commands. This encounter could involve the zealots using powers that are based around the hive mind idea (mentioned above). One power idea...

An attack vs Will that fills the victims mind with "illegible" voices from the hive mind (hundreds or even thousands of them) effectively Dazing them (save ends), etc. One cool aspect of something like this could be that the victim also gets the sense that "others" have been "called" and are on the way. This makes the fight time sensitive and the push to get to the tunnel even more urgent.

2a. Encountering the group of Zealots could result in a fight/skill challenge as well. Perhaps one of them begins a ritual to call others to the location - now the PC's must fight AND stop the ritual.


I have more ideas, but I have to get back to work

[fba827]

perhaps something is inside the tunnel wall, such as particular stones, or strange algae/moss-like plants growing on the sides in sporadic places. And (while embedded in the wall) has some strange effect -- the exact effect should depend on what else is going on.

It can be as simple as "the stones in the wall glow with magical light on their own"

Or it can boost (or drain!) endurance checks as it boosts/saps away energy (though this only works if the PCs have to do skill checks, otherwise, it's not even worth the effort to mention)

Or maybe it has some aura effect if you're in a square adjacent to it (though this works best if they're in some combat down there as well).


The edge that is near the now-dry sea might have some mutated water creatures that now live on land in the confines of the tunnel (such as sharks that mutated for land survival, etc).


Everytime someone uses a power with the "Thunder" keyword has a chance of causing a small cave-in, roll 1d20+the level of the power being used. On results higher than ? then a boulder falls at the origin square. save to get out of the way or else take X damage. (This won't mean anything unless you expect combat since they probably wouldn't toss around thunder powers without reason). Give someone a passive dungeoneering check (DC X) to recognize that the tunnel rocks in the area seem unstable.

dead (dwarven) body(ies). what were they doing when they died, why are they there?

while passing through one section of the tunnel passive perception check (DC X) and they hear the sound of breathing from what can only be a rather large/huge creature.
This will actually just serve to make the PCs paranoid, but don't need to tell them that it is actually the sound of a sleeping giant (or dragon or kobold horde, or whatever) in the mountain caves just above them.

a bullete -- (or anything that can burrow) -- instead of just coming out of the ground, it can literraly come out of the walls or cieling as well!

also another trick just to make the PCs paranoid -- they find some statues of people (possibly dwarven) that have been smashed. players will leap to conclusions about basiliks and medusa. but anyone who takes the time to inspect it (and is trained in arcana or dungeoneering or something) realizes that there is no magic residue but is in fact natural stone. and taking the time to put the pieces together it looks like it was a set of scultures that were broken here long ago.

obviously, a few of my suggestions involve plays on player paranoia. don't overdo it, just pick one trick (if any at all) or it will lose it's sting.

[avin]

Your suggestions triggered some good ideas on my mind, thank you very much guys.